Born Again
by Meer-Katnip
Summary: The Calvin Who Christmas Special. Very short, now with added explosions and swashbuckling.


_**Born Again**_

_A Calvin Who Short_

_Set between Spinning Through Space and Season Two_

* * *

"What's happening?" Rose whispered.

Ace smiled. "Regeneration, I think."

A singing filled the air.

Hobbes dashed out of the storm. "Cover your eyes," he panted.

Rose quickly slammed a hand over her forehead.

There was a very loud noise.

"Oh, look," said a slightly familiar voice. "I think I got better."

Rose looked, her mouth dropping open.

"...Calvin?"

The boy in front of them began to check over himself. He examined his arms. His legs. His nose, which he had to cross his eyes to see. "How do I look? Anything wrong?"

Rose was silent, her eyes still slightly open.

Ace decided to butt in with a snarky comment. "I think you should put on a shirt," she hissed. "You look a bit too manly for her."

"He's six!" Rose burst out, glaring at Ace. "I don't need to be worried about his manliness!"

"How do I look?" asked Calvin again, standing up and waving his hands about. "Hello? Anything wrong? Anything damaged?"

"You look..." began Sentience, but was interrupted by Calvin.

"Am I a tiger? A hamster? A CD player? A flying squirrel? A moose? A cockroach? Or, am I..." A sudden thought struck him, and he stood there, horrified. "Am I... British?"

"None of those things," said Hobbes. "Honestly, I'm a bit surprised. I don't think anyone's done this before."

"Great," snorted Calvin. "I seem to have the same impeccable sense of humor as before. So, what happened? How have I changed? Do I look older or wiser?"

He struck a dramatic pose.

Ace shook her head. "You look exactly the same as before."

A moment ticked by.

"I'm not even a tiny bit taller?" asked Calvin hopefully.

"Sorry," said Sentience. "Nothing changed at all."

Calvin kicked the wall. "Poo."

Sentience grabbed her arm, hugging it tight. "Watch it! That hurt!"

"Well," said Rose quietly, looking at him. He had finally put his shirt back on. "one thing did change."

Calvin pulled at his ears experimentally. "What? Seriously, I want a mirror."

"Your eyes."

Hobbes frowned, pulling in a bit closer. "Hey, yeah. Your eyes did change."

Calvin grinned in anticipation. "Yeah? Are they bloodshot orange with bug stripes?"

"No..." said Sentience slowly. "They're brown."

Calvin paused, as if waiting for a punchline. When he didn't get one, he scowled. "Brown?"

"Chocolate brown," affirmed Ace.

"Huh."

Rose didn't say anything, but she had just realized that Calvin's eyes were now the same color as hers. Exactly the same color.

Having got over the shock of Calvin being entirely reborn in a matter of minutes, Hobbes's eyes narrowed. "You killed yourself... you... you... idiot. Why the heck would you do that?"

"I was saving the universe," Calvin protested. "and it worked!"

Ace stepped in as well. "What if it didn't? Grandfather would still be alive, and you'd be dead, and we wouldn't be able to do anything about it. That is the... stupidest, most moronic move I've ever seen someone make, and I've seen quite a few."

"Sorry," Calvin said quietly. Then he brightened. "But, hey! It worked! And now we don't have to worry about the Faction anymore!"

Sentience crossed her arms. "And how do you figure that?" she demanded. "You said there'd be bits sticking out!"

"Sorted!" Calvin declared, sticking his hands up in the air. "See, if Future Me couldn't remember shooting me, which he didn't actually do in his timeline, by the way... it means that me doing it short-circuited everything he had ever done. He never existed, he never got around to restarting Faction Paradox, he never killed anyone, he never... destroyed the Earth."

He paused, and ran a hand through his hair, making it spike up like normal. "Technically, we never actually went to Faction Paradox in the first place... Ace never got kidnapped... I never really killed myself... uh, she never really got the ships from all over the universe to fire at the building. None of it happened."

"But you still regenerated," Ace said.

Calvin looked rather pleased. "Oh, is that what we're calling it now? Yeah. And I still lost my Transmogrifier Gun, and you still lost your motorbike."

"I lost my motorbike?" Ace screamed.

Hobbes patted her on the shoulder. "Don't worry. We'll build a new one. It'll be even better then your last one."

"So, now all we have to do is get back to Earth!" Sentience enthused. "And then we can fix up all the things we lost, and everything will be awesome!"

Calvin stepped over to the console. "Right, Susie! You start on the steering, and we'll all work together to get back to Earth."

Everyone stared at him.

"Calvin," Hobbes said. "Susie isn't in the Time Machine."

Calvin tilted his head. "Yes, she is!" He pointed to Rose. "She's right there!"

There was a long, ringing silence, as well as some more staring.

"That's not Susie," Sentience said, to break the awkwardness that was ensuing.

Calvin paused, as if trying to recollect his thoughts.

"Oh," he said eventually. "That would explain the blonde hair. I was wondering about that."

Hobbes and Ace exchanged worried glances. Rose kept looking at Calvin like she couldn't believe he was alive.

"One more question," Calvin said brightly.

"Yeees?" Hobbes replied, stretching out the syllables slightly.

Calvin frowned deeply. "Why are you all moving about like that? And why are there two of her?" He jabbed a finger at Rose again. "As if one of them wasn't bad enough!"

Rose scowled at him. "Excuse me?"

"And why has everything gone all blurry?" he continued, perhaps a bit too angrily. "That is really not fair! I almost died, and now everything's confusing!"

He wobbled on his feet for a moment.

"Oh," he said softly. "I may be about to faint."

Hobbes darted quickly forwards, and caught him, but not before he had faceplanted onto the Time Machine controls, pushing some levers and switches forwards. "What does that do?" he asked Sentience quickly.

She scrunched up her nose. "In a nutshell... make us crash. Really hard! Hang onto something!" She waved a hand and oxygen masks and life jackets dropped out of the ceiling. "There are 5 exits aboard this plane: 2 at the front, 2 over the wings, and one out the plane's rear end."

"We aren't on a plane!" Ace yelled over the crashing and groaning of the Time Machine's inner workings. She dived over to grab hold of a handle on the dashboard.

Sentience pouted at her. "Listen to the safety instructions, or you'll be sorry!"

Rose screamed pointlessly as she was thrown against the wall. Sentience, being a manifestation of the Time Machine's inner workings, stayed perfectly upright, and continued. "In the event of a loss of cabin pressure these baggy things will drop down over your head. You stick it over your nose and mouth. The bag won't inflate, but there's oxygen there, promise. If you are sitting next to a small child, or someone who is acting like a small child, please do us all a favor and put on your mask first."

"What was Calvin thinking when he invented you?" demanded Hobbes furiously, attempting to steer the Time Machine. Calvin laid, forgotten, on the floor.

"He didn't invent me," Sentience replied cheerfully. "I made myself. It was great fun. Please enjoy your flight with Timey-Wimey Airlines, and don't forget to-"

But the rest of her sentence was drowned out by a very loud noise and a very loud explosion in which the Time Machine began plummeting to Earth. Rose screamed again, because it felt like a good thing to do.

Sentience sat calmly on the ground, crossing her legs. "Buckle your seatbelts, folks," she murmured. "Looks like we're in for some turbulence..."

* * *

_Calvin Who will return sometime next year_

_with Season Two_

_AN AWFUL LOT OF RUNNING_

* * *

**Merry Christmas, Fanfiction! Thanks so much for sticking with me thus far. If nothing bad has happened to me, the Spinning Through Space bonus page should be up by now. You may read it. Season Two will be up next year, sometime. As I have mentioned before, the episode titles are on my profile page.**

**Please leave a review if you enjoyed.**


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